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Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill

This is an important Bill, which is urgently needed to ensure that we secure a better deal for the 3 million or so of our country's children who have had to endure the separation of their mother and father. We need a more integrated agenda for supporting separated families. The Bill is an important part of that agenda, but only a part, and we could learn useful lessons from Australia, where practical support for distance parenting and the establishment of civilised ongoing contact arrangements are provided in a more integrated way than we manage to achieve in this country. The Bill will be judged on its success in getting more financial support flowing between separated parents for the benefit of the children concerned. At present, only one in three lone-parent families receive any support from the non-resident parent. Even where the Child Support Agency is involved, only 62 per cent. of non-resident parents with a positive maintenance liability are currently making payments. That means that 38 per cent. of parents who are expecting the CSA to enforce their maintenance payments are being let down, and the success of the Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission must be judged on securing a swift and significant improvement in those figures. CMEC is, therefore, at the forefront of the battle to reduce child poverty, about which we learned of stalling progress this morning. The Bill gives CMEC much tougher enforcement powers to enforce maintenance liabilities. They will only be of any use if they are used, as the CSA has had powers in the past that it has failed to use. However, the measures in the Bill to use HMRC income tax data as the basis of assessment are very welcome and should ensure less aggravation for non-resident parents. In Committee, both Ministers were courteous and painstaking in replying to speeches and interventions from all Committee members and I thank them for that. I would also like to thank my hon. Friends the Members for Forest of Dean (Mr. Harper), for Peterborough (Mr. Jackson), for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose), for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) and for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mrs. Dorries). Our two Committee Chairmen, my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) and the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor), ensured fair play throughout. Chris Shaw in the Public Bill Office was an unfailing source of guidance on procedure to me, and my own staff, Christina Keen and Christopher Tufnell, have worked hard during the passage of the Bill. No Committee can complete its business without the invaluable work of the doorkeepers, police officers and Hansard writers and we are indebted to them as well. I agree with what the Minister said about paying tribute to CSA staff. The problems that the agency has had in the past are not its fault. Frankly, they are our fault, in this House, for not setting up the arrangements properly to ensure that child support worked as it was supposed to. I welcome the Minister's commitment to Crown status, also. If that provides reassurance to those working for CMEC, it will be important to the success of the agency. Many outside interest groups also helped to ensure greater scrutiny of the Bill and in particular I would like to thank Janet Allbeson of One Parent Families/Gingerbread; Resolution, the family law group; Families Need Fathers; and the Association of British Insurers, in particular. In order for the Bill to achieve its objectives, we are going to need a significant change of culture in relation to child support in addition to its provisions. The payment of child maintenance must be seen as an important positive responsibility—the first call on a separated parent's income. The Bill must ensure a fair and efficient system to achieve that, but it will also be necessary to promote the message of positive responsibility more widely, so that those who determinedly refuse to pay feel the shame of public disapproval and do not even consider boasting about their behaviour. The CSA has never dealt well with the human side of separation, but its successor, CMEC, has an important opportunity to do so with the provision of the information and guidance which is established in clause 5, and in particular the wider scope for information and guidance allowed for in clause 5(2). It is my wish that the importance of establishing ongoing civilised contact arrangements and support for distance parenting be recognised in the Bill. That is not in any way to make contact a condition of maintenance, merely a recognition of the fact that parenthood is about money and time—financial support and emotional support. Indeed, the ongoing involvement of non-resident parents in their children's lives is likely to increase their willingness to pay maintenance. In support of my argument I would like to quote Janet Allbeson of One Parent Families/Gingerbread, who said:"““There has been a lot of fuss about lone parents supposedly refusing contact. Well, lone parents have said to us: 'We want more contact. Why does he not get more involved?' There is a sort of consensus that, if non-resident parents can be more involved—providing it is safe, of course—it has very good outcomes for children.””––[Official Report, Child Maintenance and Other Payments Bill Public Bill Committee, 17 July 2007; c. 67.]" I agree with every word of that. Part of what the information and guidance service will have to do is help separated parents cope with the reality that while marriage and cohabitation are dissoluble, parenthood is not. Divorce and separation used to be regarded a bit like dividing up an estate after someone dies. The marriage or relationship was dead, the fruits of the marriage or relationship were divided and that was the end—subject to ongoing visiting rights and child support obligations, both of which were poorly enforced. Today, around the world, there is a recognition that children need, and usually want, their mother and their father to be actively involved in their lives, as long as each parent is a positive influence and there are no concerns about child abuse or violence. Internationally, there appears to be an irreversible trend towards the encouragement of shared parenting—not necessarily with equal time, but with what is termed ““substantial and significant time”” in Australia. That would include, if possible, time during the school week, not just at the weekends and during school holidays. The information and guidance service established in clause 5 will be able to learn much from the network of family relationship centres in Australia that provide a similar service. I have mentioned Australia rather a lot, and perhaps I should declare a personal interest in that my mother was Australian. The family relationship centres have been swamped by the demand for separation services, a fact that I hope will be taken on board by Ministers as they plan the capacity of the information and guidance service. I was grateful to hear a few further details about that service from the Minister. A fundamental change is the proposal to end compulsory participation in CMEC by all parents with care on benefits and the encouragement of appropriate voluntary maintenance arrangements. That will undoubtedly reduce the work load of CMEC, enabling it to cope more effectively with those cases where parents want the active involvement of the state scheme. It is obvious that a reduction in the number of parents who separate would similarly reduce the work load of CMEC and Ministers are rightly focused on that. It would be irresponsible not to encourage the Government to do more to support healthy adult relationships as they already do in a small way with their marriage and relationship support funding. Again, the opportunities to do more are enormous and do not require significant funding, merely political will. I hope that Ministers will take encouragement that it was a Democratic President who brought in a welfare reform Act in America in 1996, one of the objectives of which was to encourage the formation and maintenance of two-parent families. Some of the results on the ground are startling, with local initiatives in some countries and some cities in America experiencing drops in divorce rates of 30 to 50 per cent. On the basis that prevention is better than cure, and in order to give the Bill the best possible chance of producing a well-working system, there should be a greater focus on early interventions to reduce family breakdown. I turn now to part 4, which deals with compensation for sufferers of diffuse mesothelioma. We on the Conservative Benches wholeheartedly welcome the provisions, which represent an innovative partnership between the Department for Work and Pensions and the insurance industry. Seldom can public-private cooperation have been so necessary or so important for the sufferers of diffuse mesothelioma and their dependants. The legacy of work with asbestos means that there were 1,969 mesothelioma deaths in Great Britain in 2004 and that figure will rise to around 2,400 deaths a year by 2013. Even in 2050, around 500 deaths a year are expected. One in 100 men born between 1940 and 1950 will die of the disease. Life expectancy from the onset of the condition is eight to nine months, which is why the provisions are so important in getting statutory compensation to sufferers within six weeks. There has been much common ground among political parties, although we have not agreed about everything on a number of important areas. Nevertheless, the Bill is a move in the right direction as far as child maintenance is concerned and most definitely provides important assistance for mesothelioma sufferers and their dependants. Conservative Members will, therefore, support the Bill on Third Reading.